Healthy People 2020 launched Thursday, December 2 at George Washington University, including a comprehensive, interactive, and very user-friendly site www.healthypeople.gov.

Healthy People 2020 is important to us as social marketers for a number of reasons. For those of us who work for government clients, these are the numbers by which our success will be measured in the next 10 years. But more importantly, developmental Social Marketing targets are included under the Health Communications and Health Information Technology objective to increase the nation’s social marketing capacity. The inclusion of social marketing in Healthy People 2020 serves as a clear endorsement of the value and need for social marketing:

HC/HIT-13: Increase social marketing in health promotion and disease prevention

HC/HIT-13.1: Increase the proportion of State health departments that report using social marketing in health promotion and disease prevention programs Increase the proportion of State health departments that report using social marketing in health promotion and disease prevention programs

HC/HIT-13.2: Increase the proportion of schools of public health and accredited master of public health (MPH) programs that offer one or more courses in social marketing Increase the proportion of schools of public health and accredited master of public health (MPH) programs that offer one or more courses in social marketing

HC/HIT-13.3: Increase the proportion of schools of public health and accredited MPH programs that offer workforce development activities in social marketing for public health practitioners Increase the proportion of schools of public health and accredited MPH programs that offer workforce development activities in social marketing for public health practitioners

Another exciting addition to HP2020 is 13 new topic areas: adolescent health; blood disorders and blood safety; dementias, including Alzheimer’s disease; early and middle childhood; genomics, global health, healthcare-associated infections; health-related quality of life and well-being; lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender health; older adults; preparedness; sleep health; and social determinants of health. Over the next ten years, we can look forward to working to advance progress in all of these categories. The expanded scope of HP 2020 addresses key topics for the nation’s health, including recognizing the different health challenges in different life-stages, important diseases, and sexual minority health.

I personally am excited to tackle the challenge HP 2020 sets out for those of us working to advance health. What are you the most excited to see included in the new topics areas?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 7th, 2010 at 10:09 am and is filed under Policy, Social Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.